Jean Dubuffet, 1962–66

Organized by Lawrence Alloway, the exhibition Jean Dubuffet: 1962-1966 presented Dubuffet's drawings and paintings from his L'Hourloupe phase, a series of gouache and collage abstractions. The accompanying exhibition catalogue presents a reflective text by the artist and an introductory essay by Alloway, as well as color and black-and-white plates, a checklist, and a focused L'Hourloupe bibliography and exhibition history. The artist's text, "Twenty Third Period of My Works," provides a chronology of his work from July of 1962 to June of 1965, illustrating his switch in interest from urban themes to a series of gouache and collage works, exploring the occasional diversions as L'Hourloupe developed.

Excerpt

Instead of continuous matter, there is a labyrinth; instead of the
primal field, there is a puzzle that jumbles and divides the object. The
utensils, as common objects, are large, there, present, but the
qualifying "Utopian" indicates a counter possibility. The utopian is
that which is conceptual, unreal, and, at least for the present,
unusable. It is the utopian element which signifies the alienation, the
estrangement, which characterizes the period of L'Hourloupe.